


Under vs. Vigil: Exceptional War

by arithmeticulous



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alien Technology, Aliens, Amputee, Angst, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Spies & Secret Agents, Superpowers, Torture, Wrongful Imprisonment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-18 03:34:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8147755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arithmeticulous/pseuds/arithmeticulous
Summary: The year is 2061, and it's been thirty years since people began to develop exceptional abilities. The abilities ranged from telepathy to supersonic hearing and more. Non-exceptionals around the world quickly became concerned for their safety, and in response the United Nations founded UNDER, an international organization responsible for the safe containment of potentially dangerous people. On the outside, they seem like a benevolent international agency trying their best to deal with a dangerous global issue. On the inside, detainees know that Under is nothing but an unending nightmare. To make matters worse, three years ago an unprecedented amount of space debris hurtled down from the atmosphere. Most of it is radioactive and dangerous, and none of it resembles anything humankind has seen before. Under has borne the responsibility of collecting and researching these strange devices.
Who can stand up to such a terrifying global superpower? A liberal counter-organization, Vigil, aims to reveal Under for what it is, release its prisoners, defend the Earth from radioactive space garbage, educate the public and provide services for the world's most needy.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This chapter contains the prologue and chapter 1. That way, AO3's chapters will also align with our chapters. This work is co-authored by two writers, L and J. We will update tags and warnings as more chapters are added, but this work will likely dip into explicit territory. You've been warned. Anyway, enjoy! We've been wanting to write this for a very long time.

Prologue

Seeley Ganes was a thin, frail man now. It had been five years since he held the title of Agent and had the body to match. Now an amputee and stripped of all rank and honor, he was little more than a slave and a test subject to the organization he once served. 

UNDER stood for United Nations Division of Exceptional Recovery. About thirty years ago in the year 2021, people began emerging with unnatural abilities. They ranged from passive to active, harmless to dangerous. Some people could heal others, but some could freeze the blood in their veins. In the wake of global panic Under was born, ready to sweep these “exceptionals” into protective communities. Some called them modern day concentration camps, but then Under began running ad campaigns about how nice the conditions were. Soon, Under’s presence in most major countries in the world was commonplace. 

Seeley was quick to join up. He believed in the cause, and they would pay for his student loans from medical school. He would have a pension when he retired, and he could send his son to school. He was a single father. He often wondered now where his son ended up. He would be eighteen now. Exceptional parents tended to have exceptional children. He could only hope Under didn’t have him.

He was lying on his cot in his concrete cell, staring at the ceiling and playing memories back in his head. In his hands was the stump of his right leg. It still ached often from a combination of phantom leg syndrome and untreated nerve damage. He was rubbing it, trying to soothe it while he remembered his son as a child. 

Noel, his beautiful son, was in middle school the last time he saw him. He was moody and unhappy about how much time he spent at school or working for Under. Seeley cherished every memory of his son, but he remembered him as a baby the most. He didn’t know what he was doing halfway through his bachelor degree and suddenly a father. Noel laughed so much when he was a baby. Seeley tried to remember how it felt to hold him up against his face. He lifted the back of his hand to his cheek and closed his eyes, but his skin was calloused and dirty.

Overwhelmed with loneliness, he turned onto his side, curled up, and tried not to cry. He was so sick of crying. Monsters like him didn’t deserve to cry. 

Suddenly, the lock on his door slid open and light streamed in. He flinched and hoped he wouldn’t hear those two dreaded words…

“Get up,” A man barked. 

Suddenly, something hard hit his leg as if it had been thrown. It was his prosthetic. He sat up and slowly, as slowly as he dared, pulled on the leg. His body didn’t want to obey him. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to take another life. He didn’t want to hear the screams, see the blood, watch the light fade from their eyes…

“Hurry up,” the man growled. He pulled a wheelchair into the cell and angled it in Seeley’s direction.

Seeley flinched and finished strapping the shitty metal leg to his stump. Slowly, carefully, he pushed himself up off the cot and stood. He put most of his weight on his good leg as he walked the two steps to the chair. This was the last moment he had that he could be in control of the pace. Again, slowly, he sat down.

All too quickly, the guard had him rolling out of the room and down the hall. Seeley clenched his hands in his lap. The hallway seemed to be rushing by too fast. His stomach clenched. They turned the corner and saw the room, oh gods, that room. It was there, he could touch the handle, and… They rolled past it.

Seeley’s heart was racing and his skin felt clammy. Where were they going? They kept going and going, down hallways he didn’t know and past doors he’d never seen. What other horrors happened here? What terrible thing was in store for him? All he could hope and pray for was that it wasn’t another SIMUIN project. Three was enough. Three was really, really enough.

They seemed to walk and walk, then they were going through locked bulkheads and gates. Finally, one last door opened and Seeley winced with the intensity of sunlight. Real sunlight. It took his breath away and he winced up at that beautiful yellow orb above him. It was warm. His vision blurred and his cheeks were wet and he knew he had to look down. 

The air smelled so different. He tried to fill his lungs with it. He smelled gasoline, but even that seemed welcome. He’d smelled nothing but the same old room and the occasional horror for the last five years.

It was over so quickly. They rolled down a piece of tarmac. There was no grass, no flowers, no trees… Nothing beautiful. He couldn’t even see the outline of mountains from here. They approached a plane. Seeley wondered if planes had always been that big. He was pushed up a ramp and the outside was gone. He was left instead with a sense of dread.

Why would they move him? They would only move him if they had some other nightmare to inflict him with. When they entered a room that looked like a high-tech medical bay and he saw the man at the other end of the room. He knew him. 

“Oh, no,” Seeley said as the air rapidly deflated out of him. 

\---

Chapter 1

Vander Hale sat in the driver’s seat of an old company van, eyes glued to the rearview mirror and hands poised on the wheel of the vehicle. His knuckles were turning white as he gripped the cheap black plastic. He was a small young man with short black hair and green eyes. “He’s late,” he muttered to himself, grip tightening on the wheel of the car. “What is he doing?” His heel tapped restlessly against the floor of his van.

He was waiting for his partner to return. He’d been doing the same routine with Leslie Wells for two and a half years now, and the man was notoriously bad with timing. This was supposed to be a quick and easy mission, a grab and go. They had the coordinates for the radioactive debris and all Leslie had to do was contain the object and get back in the van, but of course things never really went according to plan. When he heard a series of gunshots, he knew just how badly things had gone.

“Dammit, Les,” he murmured, looking harder at the mirror as if it would bring his partner into sight if he just willed it hard enough. There were more shots, which was almost a relief, but his heart was still racing with concern. He was more useful to Leslie if he just stayed put with the van idling and his foot poised over the gas pedal. “Come on, come on, come on,” he muttered repeatedly to himself. 

Finally, he saw a pale light in the distance. Leslie was an exceptional, a human nightlight. It didn’t seem like an ability that could be used in the field for combat, but Leslie was still one of the best Agents Vigil had. Not only did he glow a variety of colors, he could manipulate light by storing it and releasing it to blind his enemies. As Vander watched, one of those flashes lit up the shadows and the gunfire momentarily ceased.

Vander watched anxiously in the mirror, then finally saw his luminescent partner speeding around the corner towards him. Anxiety turned to adrenaline in a split second. Finally, it was his turn. There were few people in Vigil who could match Vander’s ability behind the wheel. He boasted that he could lose anyone in any traffic, any terrain, any vehicle. 

“Drive, Van!” the glowing man yelled as he hopped into the back of the van. There was a black briefcase in one of his hands that Vander didn't recognize. He could feel the heat coming off it.

Vander didn’t need told twice. He pressed his foot down hard on the gas pedal and sped towards the main road. Just as he turned off the road, he saw a pair of uniformed Under agents running after them. He sped around corners and through neighborhoods, using his tablet to give him real-time data about traffic and stoplight cycles. He kept the small screen taped to his steering wheel. 

He jumped on the highway the first chance he got and glanced back at Leslie. His partner was just a few inches taller than him and his had pale blond hair and strangely yellow eyes. The constant glow of his skin was fluctuating between a happy yellow and a tired blue. He could see just how red the man’s hands were and he sighed.

“Do you think Under will ever get their operatives some proper equipment? That briefcase is about as useful as cardboard,” he said, shaking his head as he looked back at the road. “I’ll patch you up when we get home. Are you hungry?” he knew it was a stupid question. Leslie was always hungry.

“Starving!” Leslie said back, leaning between the seats briefly. “We can get pizza, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” Vander replied with a fond sigh. “Get that thing in the neutralizer before you get hurt worse.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Leslie replied, opening up a cubic container about a foot and a half big on all sides. He opened the briefcase next and dumped a large chunk of some kind of metal into the container. There was a little splash and a sizzling sound before he screwed the top back on with a hiss. “God this stings,” he complained, sitting back.

“I keep telling you to be more careful,” Vander replied, he was typing their pizza order into a tablet taped to the steering wheel as he drove. It was nice to see that Leslie wasn’t freaked out about this anymore. He’d always been good at multitasking.

“I am careful, it’s Under who isn’t,” Leslie insisted, offering his partner a grin. “And I have you to fix me right up.”

“Yeah, you do,” Vander agreed, rolling his eyes. “And I should have just enough time to do it before the pizza arrives.”

\---

When he was sure they weren’t being followed, Vander took the off ramp to their current home. They moved all the time, but they’d just moved into a little house in a small, sleepy town. The house was peeling green paint and dusty grey on the inside, but it was home for as long as they were stationed there.

Vander pulled into the driveway and opened the garage with a remote, then pulled in. “Get yourself inside,” Vander said as he tossed the keys to Leslie. “I’ll take that thing out back.” He got out of the car, making sure to grab his tablet before closing the door. He helped Leslie out of the van, then grabbed the neutralizer box. He made sure his partner got inside, then he brought the box around to the backyard and set it down next to a freshly dug pit. 

He came back into the house to see Leslie on the dusty, ancient couch, waiting for him to come patch him up. “How bad is it?” He asked as he came closer.

Leslie held his hands out to him with a sheepish smile. “Bad?” The skin on his palms and fingers was red and blistered. 

Vander hissed and felt a tingle across his own skin. He wished he could get Leslie some gloves, but it would limit his light-throwing power. Unfortunately, the man relied heavily on his extreme pain tolerance. “Bad,” he muttered as he shook his head and went to grab a first-aid kit from a nearby countertop. He sat down next to Leslie, opened the kit, and began to pull out the proper materials.

The shorter man was delicate and meticulous about Leslie’s care. He cleaned his burns gently and slowly, then applied a soothing cream before wrapping them up in gauze and bandage tape. “You should avoid water,” he said softly, “Just for a few days.”

Leslie tolerated the treatment, only wincing occasionally. When his partner finished, he smiled at him. “Then I’ll be all better?” 

“Yeah,” Vander said with a sigh. 

Just then, there was a knock at the door. Vander got up from the couch and pulled his wallet out at the door. He checked through the eye hole to make sure it was just the pizza delivery person before he opened it. After a brief exchange, he closed the door and brought a large cardboard box, a plastic container, and bottle of soda to the couch.

Leslie wasted no time pulling the box open and grabbing a piece. His first slice was half gone before Vander could even get one for himself. After three years, Leslie’s eating habits still never stopped astounding him. He took a modest bite of his own slice as he watched the last piece of crust disappear past luminous lips. His partner had turned a soft shade of yellow, indicating that he was pleased. 

Vander watched in silence as two, three, four pieces vanished down Leslie’s throat. Meanwhile, he was struggling to finish his first piece. He didn’t have much of an appetite. He finished up to the crust, then handed it to Leslie. The man snatched it away and devoured it in two bites, then went for his fifth slice. 

Vander grabbed the plastic container instead. He loved chocolate, and he couldn’t resist getting a piece of warm chocolate fudge cake every time they ordered pizza. Using the complimentary plastic fork, he started to take slow, appreciative bites of the moist, processed cake. 

Leslie, after six pieces, finally seemed sated. The man’s yellow glow seemed to shimmer as he settled back into the couch with a groan. “That was great.”

“Mm-hmm,” Vander intoned in agreement around a mouthful of chocolate. “Hey, do you wanna go buy mattresses tomorrow? I’m already getting sick of our inflatable pads.”

“Yeah,” Leslie said as he flushed pink for a moment before reigning it back in. 

Vander felt his heart tremble suddenly. Last time they’d picked out beds, Leslie had almost convinced him to save a little of Vigil’s money and just get one. They slept together occasionally, and often spent time in each other’s beds while trying to pass the time between missions. There had never been any intimacy, but there had been tension. It wasn’t hard to see that Leslie had feelings for him, and he hadn’t tried to discourage those feelings, but he did like his privacy. He had his own room, and he wanted his own bed, but he remembered saying maybe next time after denying him.

“Tomorrow morning, then,” Vander said as he looked toward the dusty grey wall before them. He could see the patterns of Leslie’s light, flitting across the surface like reflections off water.

\---

That night, after Leslie went to bed, Vander went into the backyard, alone like always. He approached the cubic container, opened it, and dumped the contents into the fresh pit. He moved the box back against the house, then came back to the pit, dropped a homemade explosive in beside the flickering piece of debris, and pushed a heavy iron dome over the top of the pit. He carefully laid cinder blocks and sandbags around the bottom edge, forming a decent enough seal. 

He brought up the detonation application on his watch, a miniature tablet on his wrist that he never, ever removed. It ran an operating system of his own design and gave him access to all his tech. He selected the explosive’s receiver, and once he was behind his wooden shield, he started the detonation signal. He always did this himself. Leslie handled recovery, so he handled disposal. There was something solemn about it, too. This was his job.

There was a sudden, loud thump that rumbled in the ground. Vander got up, checked to make sure the iron dome hadn’t been breached, then walked back into the house somberly and went to bed.


End file.
